Start the laptop PC with an older Kernel (e.g. 4.4.0-112; if you start with 4.13.0-32, you would have to edit Kernel parameters in the GRUB boot menu).
With »sudo xed /etc/default/grub« I edited some lines in /etc/default/grub to:

So far, only Kernel 4.4.0-109 and 4.13.0-26 have fixes for Meltdown and Spectre. 4.10 probably will not be fixed.

The Acer Aspire R3-131T with Linux Mint 18.3 doesn’t boot with Linux Kernel 4.13.0-26. But there is a workaround.

Start the laptop PC with an older Kernel (e.g. 4.4.0-109; if you start with 4.13.0-26, you would have to edit Kernel parameters in the GRUB boot menu).
With »sudo xed /etc/default/grub« I edited some lines in /etc/default/grub to:

I prefer not to have a splash screen. That is why I changed some GRUB_… lines to other values than what you find in default. If you want a splash screen, leave all the GRUB_… to their default values and just change one line: